Should've Listened to the Star Trek Dorks
by Seaouryou
Summary: [Based on episode 616] Cartman returns to the future, an obese car repairman instead of a wealthy CEO of his own time travel company, and becomes obsessed with fixing the life he so spectacularly screwed up.
1. An Introduction

Based entirely on the last two minutes of "My Future Self n' Me," this story deals with alternate universes, time travel, flashbacks, and het pairings.

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One day when Eric Cartman was nine years old, he got bored. Kenny had been exorcised from his body, so he couldn't argue with him, and Stan and Kyle were stuck in New York waiting for their parents to wire them the money for tickets home, so he couldn't argue with _them_. So Cartman did what he always did when he got bored: he figured out a way to piss people off and get paid while doing it.

He conned a back-alley store from a hooker and started the Parental Revenge Center of Western America, exacting revenge on Craig's and Clyde's parents. He also took the opportunity to pour sugar into the Broflovskis' cars' gas tanks and called in a freebie. Looking to expand his clientele, and thus make more money, he eventually put out a newspaper ad, which Stan and Butters answered.

Cartman made a good twenty-five dollars out of the business, but all that talk about future selves had gotten him to thinking. So when Mrs. Marsh gave him a box of cookies, he went home and didn't eat them.

His new resolve to eat right and study harder was immediately tested when they had to give a report on what the founding fathers would have thought about the war. But he'd buckled down and done it - not that it had mattered in the end, because before they could present it the pro-war people and antiwar people broke into a big fight and burned down the stage. The fire predictably spread to the rest of the town, and they all had to live in shacks until the adults finally Got Over It and rebuilt the town.

He'd studied and put together a good presentation for the Cultural Diversity day they had a few months later, but had gotten beaten by Kyle because the Jew Rat put on a nice sweater. Cartman first took his revenge on him by filling his parents' gas tanks with sugar again, then decided there was real power in nice sweaters and took to wearing them more often, which ended up winning him a trip to Casa Bonita for Kyle's birthday.

Though Kyle's mother's car had broken down on the way there. Apparently, something clogged up the fuel filter. Cartman couldn't _imagine_ how that had happened.

Life continued in this vein. Cartman grew up and slimmed down, until Clyde became the fattest kid in school - though Kyle still stubbornly referred to him as 'Fatass.'

"You're always going to be the Fatass, even if you aren't a fatass," he'd explained irritably in middle school. Cartman had sweetly suggested that he was on crack, or maybe the fuses were shorting out in his Jew-brain because it just didn't have the capacity to comprehend his magnificence.

Of course, Eric Cartman was an asshole. He was a narcissistic, sadistic psychopath, and getting thin and studying didn't change that. He still walked all over his mother, but over the years it evolved from him screaming until he got his way to him simply being _smarter_ than her.

But Cartman came to find that people were much more eager to overlook a person's utter dickery when the person in question was attractive and intelligent. So although his friends-who-really-weren't-friends-in-the-conventional-sense-of-the-word still hated him, with good reason, Cartman found it was suddenly easier to date. He was with Lexus briefly, but he decided her spending habits were counterproductive to his goal to make a million dollars. He hit on Shelly a few times because he thought the look on Stan's face when he did it was hilarious, and then Heidi became his steady girlfriend.

The basis of his attraction was that she was an unapologetic bitch. It worked for him, for a long time. They dated almost entirely through high school. But then, while she slacked off as he filled out college applications, he came to the inevitable conclusion that she just wasn't motivated enough for him. He wanted someone with plans as big as his. He wanted someone who was _driven_, who knew exactly what they wanted out of life, and were prepared to get it but any means necessary.

In short, Wendy Testaburger.

Wendy had always been on the edge of his radar. She'd had to be, seeing as she was Stan's on-and-off-again girlfriend. And they were in a lot of the same after-school events, like the debate team. _And_ they were competing for valedictorian.

"Forget it, Cartman," Kenny had said, attempting to intervene for Stan's sake. But telling Eric Cartman to forget about something he wanted was about as pointless as telling a politician not to lie. It was when Wendy beat him for valedictorian that cinched his decision. She was just about to be off-again with Stan, and Cartman decided to do something very impressive and very stupid to get her attention.

A week later they were dating, and Cartman was rubbing it in Stan's face. Stan bitched about it to Kyle like the pussy he was, Kyle showed an amazing amount of patience for his friend's pathetic emo-ness, and eventually Stan got over it.

Cartman went to a university. He'd had to come up with various schemes to make the money to pay for it. After all, his mother was getting on in the years, and could no longer support her son by whoring herself around town and posing for _Crack Whore Magazine_. He studied business and was, naturally, brilliant at it.

But Cartman's big break came when he returned to South Park one summer to visit his mother and Kenny. Kenny had, quite predictably, not gotten any farther than high school. Instead, he had knocked up Bebe Stevens - who was still attending college regardless - and was serving coffee at Benny's.

The summer pretty much sucked ass. Cartman had to stop bringing Kenny over to his house, because he wouldn't stop hitting on his mother. And his mother wasn't exactly telling him no. When Kenny wasn't checking out his mother's ass, he was shoving baby photos under his nose. Kenny was completely enamored with his daughter, who was under Bebe's mother's care until Bebe finished college.

One morning, when he felt he couldn't deal with his mother or Kenny for another minute without killing them both and grinding them up the garbage disposal, he took a little walk to work off the rage. And it was by complete chance that he ran into those Star Trek nerds that lived next door to Kyle, out working on a time machine similar to the one that had nearly sent them all back to third grade.

If several years of studying business in college had taught Cartman anything, it was how to recognize an idea worth stealing. He dug his old _Mission Impossible: Breaking and Entering Playset_ out of the attic and snuck into their house in the dead of the night, swiping the time machine. The next morning he caught the earliest plane back to his university, the time machine concealed safely in his suitcase. He stayed up late at night with the thing when he should have been studying, figuring out exactly how it worked and modifying it just enough so that he could say it was his own.

Eventually Cartman dropped out of college and started a small time travel company, which took off even faster than he'd expected. He hired Kenny and brought him out to perform the particularly vital role of testing the time machines. He marketed time travel as the ultimate of utilities - it provided every service, from an alternative to abortion to the best vacation money could buy. One small building turned into two, then seven, and before Cartman knew it he'd built an empire. As he got steadily richer he began setting aside a certain amount to send a monthly 'I have more money than you' parade to Kyle's house, complete with clowns, elephants, and a barbershop quartet.

When he and Wendy got married, it was less a matter of him proposing and more a matter of her telling him the time and date and that if he didn't show up at the alter she would have him poached and mounted on the wall as a warning to all men who crossed her. So of course Cartman showed up. They were using his money to pay for the reception, after all. They honeymooned in Paris, because Wendy said it was the most beautiful city in the world. Cartman quite agreed, from what he could see from their hotel window.

As Cartman's company expanded, Wendy climbed the political ladder. She was aiming to become a senator and finally do something about the suffering of bottle nosed dolphins. As they began to get into their thirties, they started discussing children. Wendy had always wanted them, ever since the egg project in fourth grade.

Wendy writhed in envy every time she saw Kenny and Bebe. Kenny had been turned into a sort-of member of the Stevens family; he came over for every holiday, he took them on weekend trips to fairs and amusement parks, and he watched over Bebe's mother when she twisted her ankle after trying to walk in her new, incredibly high heels. Sometimes he and Bebe dated and sometimes they didn't, and when they were twenty-five Bebe had gotten pregnant with another little girl.

Age had not mellowed Kenny in the slightest; he still overwhelmingly adored his daughters. If anything, age had made him more crazy, because now that his older daughter was twelve he'd taken on the rather obsessive task of keeping "perverted bastard boys like me" away from her.

He'd even bought a gun, though Bebe assured them it was entirely in jest. She hoped.

One day when Eric Cartman was thirty-two years old, seated at his desk in his private office, smugly overlooking his time travel company, with Wendy on his side and the possibility of a family on the horizon, he decided it would be a good idea to go back in time and congratulate his nine-year-old self on a job well done.

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TBC


	2. Enter Wendy and Kyle

Hokay. The first chapter is more or less in place just so the reader knows where AR!Cartman is coming from. The first chapter _is_ an alternate reality - the future presented in the rest of the story is the "canon"/"correct" one. The two realities split off at the moment where Cartman essentially tells his future-self to fuck himself... so don't expect the correct future to anything like the one laid out in the first chapter.

I hope that didn't confuse you all utterly.

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When Cartman returned from the past, the only thought running through his mind - well, only _coherent_ thought, because his mind was very garbled at the moment - was the one that had came with the stark realization he'd had when his younger self had walked away, gorging on cookies: God damn it.

God _damn_ it.

One of the biggest problems Cartman had had with the time machines was figuring out a way to get back to the present. Kenny had disappeared into many a time stream, as a matter of fact. Having the customer take a time machine back with them was pointless, as he'd discovered one couldn't travel to the future. He'd eventually added a timer to the thing, not unlike a toaster. When the time traveler's set time was up they simply popped back the moment they'd left, simple as that.

Cartman had had a lot of problems when he'd first started his time travel business. If he hadn't had such a talent for dealing with other people, his company would have been buried in lawsuits and never gotten off the ground.

Something a lot of customers had seemed unable to grasp was that the time machine could travel through time - _not space_. They'd take it home and expect to end up in Paris ten years earlier, only to end up right in the middle of their living room, right in the middle of the family that had lived there ten years before. This always ended in much screaming and charges of breaking-and-entering. Cartman had had to slap a huge warning sticker over the packet, which most people chose to ignore, much like the warning on a packet of cigarettes.

So when Cartman had decided to go back to the time when he was nine (which Kenny had said was a bad idea, and Stan had said was a bad idea, and Cartman had almost considered not doing it until Kyle said it was a bad idea, and then he'd _had_ to do it) he'd caught a flight to South Park. He'd set the time machine for the year and date, and the timer for twenty minutes, figuring that was more than enough time to congratulate himself.

Only it had taken him a good eighteen minutes to find Motivationcorp, because Colfax Avenue was a hard place to navigate and he hadn't been there for a good fifteen years. So as Cartman watched himself walk down the sidewalk with Stan and Stan's parents, a horrible, doomed feeling growing in his gut, he was suddenly flung twenty-three years forward, back to his present year.

What had once been Motivationcorp had become a vacant, paved lot. The same hookers that populated Colfax Avenue were there - on the same street corners, even - twenty-three years older.

Cartman just stood there, feeling too shocked to _feel_ shocked. He gazed numbly at the toolbox that had manifested in his left hand, and noted in an absent, isn't-that-interesting? sort of way that he could no longer see his feet.

He decided to take control of his situation while he was still too dazed to have a panic attack. Obviously the first thing he needed to do was get in contact with Wendy. Cartman searched himself for his cellphone, but discovered his gasoline-stained suit did not have one in any of the pockets.

Cartman tried to force his mind out of its current haze. Of course he didn't have a cellphone now, he reasoned, and even if he did Wendy's number wouldn't be the same. He worked through the problem as speedily as his head would allow: before he could call Wendy, he had to get her phone number. And a phone. Her parents would have her phone number. Her parents were in South Park. South Park was equipped with phones.

Logical conclusion: he had to get out of Colfax Avenue, to the more respectable side of South Park.

Cartman immediately set about getting a cab. In his current state, this meant stumbling off of the curb into on coming traffic. A taxi screeched to a halt, a mere inch from hitting him, and Cartman walked over, yanked the door open, and climbed inside.

"Take me to the Kenny McCormick Memorial Town Square," he told the cab driver.

"_Excuse_ me!" barked an indignant voice, and Cartman looked to his side at a very ruffled looking woman, squashed up against the side of the cab. "I had this taxi first!"

"Fine," Cartman said, sighing as though he were being horribly put upon. "We can go to your place first."

"Ugh, forget it!" she cried, yanking the door open and stumbling out onto the sidewalk. Cartman reached over and closed the door behind her, then met the very confused cab driver's eyes.

"Well? God damn it, what are you waiting for?"

The driver made a discontented noise, put the car in gear, and started off. Cartman looked out the window as they drove along. Everything looked pretty familiar - Cartman hoped that meant the future hadn't been altered very much.

When the cab driver pulled up to the town square, Cartman fished out his wallet, opened it, and looked blankly inside. It was... empty. Not once in twenty-five years could Cartman remember a time when he'd had _no_ money. Even when he was nine he'd usually had a ten to wave under Kenny's nose and make bets with Kyle on. The idea of having _no_ money was a purely alien concept. Incapable of being processed.

"Well?" the cab driver prompted, his hand held out expectantly. Cartman tried to think of a way to distract him, but an idea refused to manifest itself. Feeling somewhat desperate, Cartman jabbed a finger behind the driver's head.

"Look! A distraction!"

To Cartman's surprise, the cab driver actually turned around to look. Cartman seized the door handle, wrenched it open, and sprinted out into the snow.

There was a time when Cartman had been a fairly good runner. Now it took him two yards before he nearly doubled over, wheezing. Cartman clutched his chest, which was burned, and swore. He glanced behind himself to see the cab driver peel out of there, apparently not caring enough about the money owed him to run Cartman down in the taxi.

Some people, Cartman thought, had no work ethic.

It then occurred to Cartman had he had left his toolbox in the cab, and he swore again.

Cartman walked slowly to the nearest pay phone, letting his pounding heart return to normal. There were a few people out and about and none of them were cyborgs, so he counted this as a plus. He squeezed into one of the glass booths and forced the door closed behind him, feeling more than a little claustrophobic. Picked up the somewhat tattered copy of the yellow pages, Cartman flipped to the T's, and scanned the page for 'Testaburger.'

Wendy's parents had always been pushovers, and Wendy had always had them on a tight leash. Her control over them had never been as obvious as his control over his own mother, but then, it was the way in which Wendy was such a more subtle evil that Cartman had always found so incredibly attractive.

He spotted her father's name and dialed, but when he put the phone to his ear he heard a cold, mechanical voice say, "Please deposit twenty-five cents."

Cartman trapped the phone between his head and his shoulder and dug out his wallet, opened it, and was once again shocked to find it devoid of money. It really shouldn't have surprised him, considering it had also been empty ten minutes ago and, despite Cartman's greatest efforts, he'd never been able to make money magically materialize out of thin air.

But it _did_ surprise him, because... Cartman wasn't used to not having money. For that matter, Cartman wasn't used to scarcely fitting into a phone booth, and he wasn't used to not being able to dash on a bill, and, FUCK IT, he wasn't used to anything in this alternate future!

It's odd that, out of everything, it was a lack of twenty-five cents that would snap Cartman out of his fog and make him finally acknowledge that he had _fucked up_, that he had done what he'd spent so much in advertising to make sure none of his customers did. He'd altered time. He'd changed the future. And it wasn't even something frivolous, like making the Japanese win World War II! This was _his life!_

"FUCK YOU, KYLE!" Cartman shouted suddenly and slammed the phone against one of the glass walls, hard, but not quite hard enough to break it. "If you'd kept your filthy Jew mouth shut I wouldn't have gone back!"

He groaned and placed his hands over his face, leaning against the phone booth. How was he supposed to survive in an unfamiliar world without a cent to his name? Cartman had sworn to himself that he'd never come crawling back to his mother for financial aid, back when he'd been swiping parts from cars at the car wash he'd been working at and reselling them to put himself through college. He'd promised himself he'd make it on his own or, failing that, he would mug and/or drug a rich man before he turned into one of those people that asked for handouts from their elderly parents.

Cartman slid down the wall, slipping into as much of a seated position as his size and the cramped space would allow. And, more importantly, how was he going to do this without Wendy? He hated sounding like a faggy, wangsting emo-pussy, but he loved Wendy. She was just as cunning and manipulative as he was, though in a slightly more legal fashion. She never let him steamroll over her, she didn't like Kyle, she was fucking hot, and she _cooked_. Clearly Wendy was superior to all other women.

It was in that moment that Cartman happened to lift his face from his hands and catch sight of seventy-three cents on the floor of the phone booth, loose change that had been blocked from his view when he'd been standing up. Cartman blinked a few times, then smirked. He had said time and time again that God loved him. Whenever things looked their absolute worst - like, say, wasting an entire Saturday on a Grandmother's funeral - God always seemed to throw him a million-dollar bone.

He scooped up the change and righted himself, depositing a quarter and redialing. Cartman waiting impatiently for someone to pick up. After what felt like an eternity (but was only three rings) Mrs. Testaburger did, chirping "Hello," in that annoying way she always did.

"Hello, Mrs. Testaburger," he said as suavely as he could, aware that his voice sounded whinier than it used to. "This is Eric."

"Eric who?"

"Eric Cartman."

"Who?"

Cartman gave the phone an incredulous look. Perhaps, in this alternate reality, Mrs. Testaburger was suffering from hearing loss. "_Cartman_. Wendy's _husband_."

"Who? I'm sorry, that's not the name of my daughter's husband."

Cartman dropped both the phone and the phonebook in his haste to bring his left hand to his face, experiencing a short burst of panic until he saw the gold band. Maybe, Cartman considered, in this alternate reality Mrs. Testaburger's head had fallen onto a railroad spike. Yes, that sounded plausible.

Gradually he became aware of the faint "Hello? Hello?" emitting from the dangling telephone. Cartman retrieved it and brought the receiver back to his ear. "Can I just have her phone number?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Cartman, but I can't give my daughter's number out whenever a whack job claiming to be her husband asks for it." Cartman wondered if this was a common occurrence. "She doesn't need the added excitement of a stalker to her life."

Cartman gnashed his teeth, tried to think of a way to argue with her (it had always been Wendy who talked her parents out of visiting on Christmas), and finally just hung up the phone. He glared at the receiver for a few minutes, then he put in another quarter and redialed Mrs. Testaburger's number.

"Hello?" she chirped cheerfully.

Cartman coughed into his hand and then said, in a rather believable impersonation of Butters, "W-why, hello, ma'am. South Park High's fifteen-year high school reunion is coming up, by golly, and we need to notify your daughter. If you could just give us her phon..." Cartman trailed off. He glanced down at the two dimes and three pennies in his hand and realizing he didn't have enough left to make a third phone call. "... Her _address_, we'll send her the invitation in the mail."

"Of course!" Mrs. Testaburger said brightly and rattled off some numbers and a street name. Cartman searched somewhat frantically for a piece of paper and a pen, found none, and asked Wendy's mother to repeat the address. He thanked her, hung up, and repeated the address out loud a few times to commit it to memory. Then he got into a brief scuffle with the door until it finally surrendered, opened, and he could squeeze back out of the phone booth.

Cartman had to admit he was shocked Wendy was living in South Park in this alternate reality. Wendy's fierce desire to get the HELL out of South Park after she graduated had been second only to Kyle's. But at the moment he didn't really care _why_ she was in town - all that mattered was that she _was_, and he could go see her.

The walk to her house seemed abnormally long, considering the size of South Park. Perhaps it was just anticipation. Or perhaps it was because he had to stop every block or so to lean against a stop sign or brick wall and wheeze. Being fat had never bothered Cartman when he was a little kid, because he'd never been _not_-fat, and thus had had nothing to compare it to.

But after busting his ass throughout middle school to lose weight, after a good twenty years of not only not being fat but being _attractive_ as well, this was absolutely maddening. Cartman punched the brick wall he was leaning against in frustration, then hopped away, cursing and clutching his hand.

When Cartman finally made it to Wendy's house, it was like a shining beacon in an otherwise shitty reality... Like bacon in a synagogue. He took the steps two at a time, ignored his shortness of breath, and pounded on the door. He just about wept with joy when the slim brunette opened the door.

"Wendy!" he exclaimed, then rested an hand against the door frame to catch his breath when it refused to be ignored. He gave her a fond smile. "God _damn_ am I glad to see you." And what a sight she was, too. Not exactly as he remembered her - her hair was much shorter and wasn't styled. She was wearing a dress that was plainer than the business suits he was used to, and her flat shoes didn't strike the fear of castration into political opponents the way her old stiletto heels used to. But those were minuscule changes; she was still very much Wendy, and he was still very much glad to see her.

Wendy frowned at him, looking somewhat confused. "Cartman? Is that you?"

Cartman frowned back at her, feeling somewhat confused. "Eric. And, yeah, who the hell else would I be? Holy fuck, this has got to be the worst day of my life. I seriously need some of your home cooking-"

"What are you talking about?"

"What do ya mean, what am I talking about? I-"

"Wendy?" a masculine voice called from within the house, and Cartman stiffened. "Who is it?"

Wendy let her eyes linger questioning on Cartman before she called over her shoulder, "Eric Cartman."

"_What?_"

There was a scrape of a chair against wood, heavy footsteps, and then the door was pulled the rest of the way open to reveal none other than Kyle Broflovski.

Cartman gaped at him. "Why aren't you in Manhattan!"

"'Why...'? I've never been to Manhattan, fatass."

Cartman fumed. "You've been Jewing it up in Manhattan for the last ten years!"

"Wendy, let me deal with this," Kyle said, glancing over at her. She made a displeased face at him then turned and went back inside.

Cartman was fuming. "You can't order her around like that!"

"What the fuck do you want, fatass? Is this about my car?" Kyle said, resting an arm against the door as if he were barring him entrance.

"Wha... what the fuck do I care about your Jewmobile! This is about Wendy!"

"Stay away from my wife, Cartman," Kyle said, glaring and crossing his arms.

Cartman was sure he hadn't heard that right. No matter how cruel this reality was, that _could not happen to him_. "She's _my_ wife!"

"God, I always knew you'd snap one of these days," Kyle said. "What brought this on, anyway? Yesterday you weren't even on speaking terms with her."

"Yesterday she was cooking me a steak dinner while we discussed a summer trip to New Zealand!" Cartman cried, outraged.

"Whatever. Just get off my property before I call the police."

"Fine. You know what, Kyle? Screw you, I'm going home." He turned away, then stopped. Hesitated. He glanced back at Kyle, who was still standing in the doorway with his arms folded, and wetted his lips.

"You wouldn't happen to know where I live, would you?"

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Cartman glanced from the address Kyle had written down for him to the numbers on the mailbox. He scowled, then crumbled up the paper and stuffed it in his pocket. So... this was his house. In _his_ reality he'd had a huge one in Los Angeles, where the head of his company had been located. In _this_ reality it was the same stupid two-story thing that absolutely everyone in town had, except the McCormicks.

He tried the door. It was just his luck that it was locked. After a long and irritable search he found a spare key underneath a flowerpot and let himself in.

The floor plan was even the same. As someone who liked having better things than other people, this was really starting to piss him off. He climbed the stairs and found his bedroom, then changed out of his clothes and dug through his drawers for something that wasn't a car repairman's uniform. He noticed, while he got dressed, that there were several woman's clothes in his closet.

So he _was_ married. Just... not to Wendy. Cartman sat heavily down on the edge of the double bed. His beautiful, pristine Wendy had been _tainted._ The Jew had _touched_ her. Not that he really blamed Kyle - what man in his right senses wouldn't want to cup her prefect breasts? Or slid his hands up her shapely thighs? But, really, what had possessed Wendy to lower herself to such a level? She was worth more than all the Jew Gold in the world. He felt depressed for a moment, but it was quickly replaced with righteous anger. Like _hell_ he was going to let that Jew rat steal his wife away from him.

Cartman decided to make that his first priority. Once he had Wendy back he could figure out how to get rich again. And lose some weight.

He glanced across the room at the floor-length mirror and frowned at what he saw. He'd worked hard throughout his childhood years to lose the weight he'd accumulated during elementary school. And now that his metabolism had slowed down and he was so much heavier, it was going to be even harder. Maybe he could try eating an ounce of City Wok food a day.

Or liposuction.

Cartman was struck with a moment of intense loathing for his nine-year-old self. He wondered what sort of psychological problems that might indicate.

He heard the front door open, and then a female voice shouted "Eric!" Cartman winced and stood up. That could only be his wife. "ERIC!" she shouted again, much louder.

He licked his lips anxiously, swallowed, and called without enthusiasm, "I'm upstairs."

Cartman heard her stomp up the stairs. He watched the door handle twist and the door swing open, and he stared with sheer horror at the woman who stood in the door frame.

"Oh, no. Oh God, no," Cartman whimpered. He squeezed his eyes closed and pressed his back against the wall, taking several deep breaths.

He opened his eyes again, slowly, willing the figure before him to change into something else, but it didn't. He stared at his wife.

Shelly.

Shelly _Cartman_.

Stan's older sister.

And once again all Cartman could think was, God _damn it_.

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TBC


	3. Enter Kenny

Sorry about the delays with updating.

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Married life with Shelly was certainly a nightmarish affair. Speaking of affairs, Cartman desperately hoped he was having one. It was a thought he had never entertained before, half because he honestly didn't think there was anyone that could measure up to Wendy, and half because he knew for a fact that Wendy would have killed them both. _Literally_ killed them. And no one would have ever found his body. So he'd never been tempted, no matter how many hot secretaries his company employed.

But Shelly... oh God, _Shelly_. The only time Cartman had ever made a pass at her was when he'd been trying to piss Stan off. How the hell had he ended up with her? If it couldn't be Wendy, why not... _Heidi_, at least? They'd had some good times, before he'd realized Wendy really was the only person that he wanted to be with long-term.

Of course, Heidi was a stuck-up bitch, and he... wasn't exactly fit anymore.

Shelly made him cook dinner for her, which was, he decided, one the the worst experiences of his life. He had only basic culinary skills, because Wendy was a fucking genius in the kitchen. And when she was too busy campaigning or at a conference or some benefit dinner, he'd always yelled at their pool boy to cook him something. His pool boy, lacking any culinary skills himself, had then ordered him takeout.

Shelly threw pans, too. Cartman had never thought there would come a time when he didn't want to be in a kitchen, but that day had finally arrived.

But as hellish as it was, it hadn't been _the_ worst experience of his life. That had come later that evening. He'd been trying to fall asleep on his incredibly lumpy mattress, minding his own business, when Shelly slid over to his side of the bed and laid a hand on his hip.

Cartman had screamed a particularly panicked scream and fallen off the bed, frantically tried to untangle his legs from the blanket, and scooted backwards across the bedroom floor before jumping up to his feet, poised to fight her off if need be.

Shelly propped herself up on the bed and made a face at him, looking both confused and pissed off. "Turd-lelove, come back to bed," she commanded. Cartman could only assume that was supposed to be a term of endearment.

"I HAVE A HEADACHE. _FOREVER_," Cartman said in an unnaturally high voice, backing away.

And that was how Cartman ended up kicked out of his bedroom and made to sleep on the couch. Cartman did not see this as a punishment, however. In fact, he had gotten down on his knees and praised God.

As he laid awake on the uncomfortable couch, he thought about the time Wendy had talked him into a ski trip to Aspen. The way she had put the fear of God into those annoying time share guys had to be the hottest thing Cartman had ever seen. When he'd told Wendy she'd laughed and said most would consider it a warning sign when their husbands would rather see them crush a grown man's spirit and leave them in a quivering mass on the floor than see them in a skimpy negligee.

It was depressing, to think that that had never actually happened. That Wendy had thrown away being an eco-terrorist for the life of a housewife. That she'd settled for _Kyle_, who would talk her out of her psychotic moods instead of being turned on by them.

Cartman didn't get much sleep that night. In fact, he didn't get any, in between lamenting Wendy and hating his nine-year-old self and the uncomfortable couch and fearing getting raped by Shelly. It seemed that he was only just drifting off when Shelly shrieked "Get _UP!_" in his ear.

Cartman jumped. "What the _hell?_" he demanded.

"It's Monday," Shelly informed him with more ire than usual. Cartman supposed she hadn't gotten over being turned down last night. "Get up, make me breakfast, then go to work!"

It was while he was trying to figure out the mechanics of breaking an egg without getting a bunch of the shell in the pan when it occurred to him. "Shelly?" he called, and she screeched "WHAT?" back at him.

"Where do I work, exactly?"

--

It was horrible. Degrading. It offended all his moral sensibilities. It wasn't quite as bad as Wendy marrying Kyle, but it was definitely worse than being fat.

Shelly had dropped him off at McCormick's Car Garage.

He was _working_ for _Kenny._

"'Kay, Cartman, replace the brake fluid in that hybrid," Kenny said absently, chomping on a cigarette and flipping through some paper. Cartman wondered if it were worth pointing out the danger of smoking in a place that dealt with cars and, inevitably, gasoline.

"You know," he said, glaring at Kenny, "in _my_ reality - which is to say, the correct reality - I have you employed in a luxurious job as my test dummy. It pays well, and all you have to do is die."

Kenny rolled his eyes. "You can fake hallucinations all you want, Cartman, but I'm not giving you paid medical leave, so you might as well get on with fixing that car."

"I'm not hallucinating, asshole. If it weren't for my paychecks you wouldn't have been able to give Bebe those fat child support checks."

Kenny looked up and narrowed his eyes. "You know I never managed to score with Bebe, fatass. Now go replace the brake fluid in the fucking hybrid."

"But," Cartman complained, "I shouldn't have to do manual labor! That's why God created the lumberjack nation of Canada!"

"Would you stop your bitching and-"

"I don't even know _how_ to change brake fluid," Cartman whined.

"NOW!" Kenny snapped, loosing his patience and storming off.

"Poor piece of crap," Cartman mumbled.

As he propped open the hood and stared at the car, waiting for it to fix itself, Cartman tried to work that out. Kenny had been after Bebe all through high school. He'd more or less stalked her, as a matter of fact. Kenny had finally hooked up with Bebe on his own first date with Wendy. Wendy had dragged Bebe along in case Cartman started acting too much like Cartman so that they could storm out together, and Cartman hadn't been able to beat Kenny off with a stick (he'd tried) when Kenny had found out Bebe was going to be there.

He'd found out from Kenny later that they'd both gotten tired of their best friend's crazy and left during the popcorn fight to make out in the back seat of Bebe's car. A year later Kenny had knocked Bebe up.

But, Cartman supposed, there had never been any such double date in this grievously flawed universe, and thus Kenny had no baby pictures to harass innocent bystanders with. Just another example of Jews fucking it up for everybody else.

Cartman sighed and glared at the car. He went cross-eyed after a while, then decided the brake fluid must be somewhere inside the car, because he wasn't seeing anything under the hood.

An examination of the car uncovered two cents and a mint stuck to a road map. Cartman pocketed it all and riffled through the glove compartment absently. Truthfully, he'd already completely forgotten about the brake fluid.

It was while he was going through the glove compartment that it occurred to him Kyle had asked him about his precious Jewmobile yesterday. If his car was getting worked on, then they must have his phone number somewhere on file.

Cartman sat in the car a moment longer, resting his hands on the steering wheel and thinking it over. He scoped out the rest of the garage, but no one was paying any attention to him. Kenny was chewing out another employee on the opposite side of the room from his office.

Cartman slid out of the car, whistled in an unconvincingly innocent manner, and darted for Kenny's office. He closed the blinds once inside and wretched the file cabinet open, speedily flipping through it for 'Broflovski.'

Nothing.

Cartman nearly punched the wall in frustration, but he assumed that would attract attention, and he didn't want _Kenny_ to fire _him_. Now _that_ would be humiliating.

He paced, ran an aggravated hand over his head, then stopped and fisted his hair. Cartman's gaze darted around the room, before landing on Kenny's desk. What if, he considered, Kenny and Kyle were still friends in this reality? They'd fallen out of touch in his - understandably, living on opposite sides of the country, and Kyle had only ever made an effort to stay in contact with Stan. He would have lost contact with Cartman, too, if Cartman hadn't taken certain steps to make sure he would always be able to harass Kyle, no matter where he moved.

But in this reality they were both still living in South Park. Cartman dove for the desk, dug through the drawers, and unearthed an address book. Sure enough, Kyle's name was the first one he saw.

Cartman stole one of Kenny's pens and wrote the name down on the road map he'd liberated from that car that had... something about a break, Cartman neither remembered nor cared. He tucked the map into his front pocket, patted it to make sure it was there, then slid casually back out of the office. He spared a look back, from the pulled-out file cabinet drawers to the ransacked desk, then shrugged and figured it was clean enough.

The phone booth was actually very close by, so the walk from the car garage was a short one. Cartman thanked God that he now had twenty-five cents while the phone rang.

And rang.

He very nearly screamed when Wendy didn't pick up and Kyle's prerecorded voice greeted the caller, invited them to leave a message for Kyle and Wendy Broflovski. Through some miracle he managed to stay on the line without losing it, and when he heard the beep he said, "Wendy, it's Eric. Call me at, um-" he had no idea what his phone number was "-well, you can look it up in the phonebook-"

"Hello?"

Cartman's heart almost stopped. "Wendy?"

"Cartman what the _hell_ are you doing calling here?"

"It's Eric. And I was wondering if you'd like to grab a cup of coffee."

Silence. On the other line, Wendy gave the receiver a stupefied look.

"What?"

"Coffee. A beverage made from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant. Also a caffeine delivery system-"

"Why the hell are you asking me out to coffee?"

"It's too early for beer."

"Right," Wendy said. "Well, much as it pains me to say this, I'm going to have to decline. I have laundry to do, and I very much doubt Kyle would like it if I went out with the man he's hated since elementary school. More importantly, I doubt _I_ would like it."

"So that asshole has you chained to the washer so that you can never go out with friends?"

"First of all, we AREN'T friends. And don't say that about my husband!" Wendy snapped. "Kyle's a good man."

"That's the best thing you can think of to say about him? He's a 'good man'? Pfft, Kyle's a cheap-ass Jew-rat who must be slipping stupid pills into your food, if you think folding his socks is more fun than a lunch date."

"I'd imagine cleaning out a septic tank would be more enjoyable than a date with you, Cartman," she said coolly.

"God damn it, it's Eric! And that heeb better not be having you scrub his toilet bowl. Everyone knows that's hired help's work, specifically of the illegal Mexican sort. They're already used to being dirty-"

"Oh yes," Wendy said sarcastically. "Ethnic slurs are clearly the way to _my _heart."

"Really? Because I have more. Kyle's a fucking kik-"

"I'm hanging up now."

"Wait!" Cartman said quickly. "Look, I've pissed you off pretty good, haven't I?"

"Yes," Wendy said shortly.

"So wouldn't you like nothing better than to tell me off to my face? I'm sure you'll get much more satisfaction out of it than yelling at me over the phone. We'll even have hot coffee so that you can pour it on my lap if the need strikes you."

_That_ gave Wendy pause, because she always _had_ preferred facing an opponent head-on. She'd lived for that, back when she was on the debate team in high school, before she'd settled into the role of a housewife. And, suddenly, doing laundry sounded unbearably dull, and having lunch with the most despised person in town sounded like _fun_.

"It better be _hot_ coffee."

"Tweek's always makes it scalding to cover up the shitty taste."

--

He'd been half-sure she wouldn't even show up. And that's why he let out a sigh of relief when slid into the chair opposite him, set down her purse, and cocked an eyebrow at him.

"Well?"

"I ordered you an Espresso Macchiato," he said, gesturing toward the drink in front of her before taking a sip of his own.

Wendy gave the cup a dubious look. "That's my favorite."

"I know."

She glared at him a little, suspicious. "Are you stalking me? Is this your latest plan to piss Kyle off?"

"No, God damn it. Why do you think this is about Kyle?"

Wendy snorted. "Because it's always about Kyle. You've spent your entire life trying to make him miserable."

"That's not true at all," he said irritably. "I've spent my entire life trying to make myself happy. It just so happens that his misery makes me happy." He paused, took another sip from his coffee, and looked pointedly across the table at her. "Other things make me happy, too."

Wendy avoided his eyes and looked past him, out the window. "... What's your point?"

"Do you ever feel," he said seriously, giving her an equally serious look, "as if your entire life is completely _wrong?_"

"Who doesn't?" she asked, laughing, and toyed with her wedding ring, twisting it around her finger.

"Run away with me," Cartman commanded, reaching across the table and clasping her hands in his.

"What?" she asked blankly, staring at him.

"Run away with me," he repeated. She continued to stare at him, then shook her head with an absent, amused smile.

"You're being ridiculous. That's so... where would we even _go?_"

"Anywhere," Cartman said. He deliberated a moment. "Switzerland."

"Oh?" Wendy said. "Why Switzerland?"

"They're such war-evasive pussies, I bet I could take the country over with a butter knife."

"What if I don't want to rule Switzerland?" Wendy asked, the corner of her mouth quirking upward.

"Then we could start a watch shop... or a chocolate shop... or a shop of chocolate watches. And we would control the economy, at least."

"You really think that would work?" Wendy asked, smiling despite herself as she took a generous swig of her expresso.

"Well, you know the Swiss. They can't get enough of that chocolate, and they all have watch fetishes. Every. Single. One."

Wendy snorted. She had to lean forward and set down her cup so that she didn't spray coffee everywhere. It was... odd, but Cartman was... strangely fun to be around. She'd never thought she'd be able to laugh at something that Eric Cartman, the man her husband loathed and the rest of the town hardly put up with, had said. She knew he was hated for a reason - or rather, many reasons - but at the moment she couldn't recall any of them.

"You're being crazy," she said. "You have Shelly and I have Kyle-"

"Screw Shelly and Kyle!" Cartman snapped.

Wendy frowned abruptly; her eyebrows and the corners of her mouth drew down sharply, and she slipped her hand out of his, just realizing she'd never removed them. Suddenly she very clearly remembered why he was a social pariah.

"I'm not running away with you, Cartman," she said coolly. "I don't even know you."

"Just shut up," Cartman snapped, because he didn't want to hear her call him _Cartman_, she was supposed to call him _Eric_. "You said yourself your marriage was in the toilet."

"Wha... that is COMPLETELY twisting the conversation we had... I... UGH! You be careful what you say about my marriage," she bit out.

"Look," Cartman said, picking up her hands again. He had expected some resistance, and was heartened when he received none. "I know, okay, that I don't look like much right now. But if you stick with me I promise I'll be rich, handsome, and buy you lots of badass stuff."

Wendy smirked, a little. "You know, all Kyle ever promised was to take care of me."

"Ha! Douche."

"Yes," she said kindly, removing his hands from hers again. "Well, Kyle kept _his_ promise." She picked up her purse and stood. Cartman grabbed her sleeve, searching for something to say to make her stay.

Being Cartman, he of course didn't say the right thing. "He never promised to love you, then?"

Wendy slapped him hard and left the restaurant, her sensible shoes slapping against the tile.

"Damn bitch," Cartman breathed out, glaring down at his cup of coffee as he rubbed his cheek. "I really hate loving her sometimes."

--

When he got back to the garage, Kenny was beside himself.

"Where the hell were you!"

Cartman shrugged. "Lunch break?"

"You hadn't even been here for half an hour!" Kenny said, clutching his forehead as he felt a migraine coming on.

"Well, I was hungry."

"Did you go through my office?" Kenny demanded.

"Only a little."

It was going to be a really bad migraine. Death by migraine, he imagined the coroner saying.

"... Cartman, go home. For my own health."

"Hell, if you're offering..." Cartman said. He was nearly out the door before he thought of something. "Hey, Kenny?"

"_What_, Cartman?" Kenny said, fighting to remove the cap from a bottle of Tylenol.

"Where the hell is Stan, anyway?"

"You're asking _me?_ You're his brother-in-law, shouldn't you know better than anyone?" Kenny asked. Cartman stared blankly at him and he sighed.

"He's a news reporter in Denver, remember? He took off when Kyle announced he was marrying Wendy."

"Oh," Cartman said. He left as Kenny succeeded in getting the cap off the bottle, scattering Tylenol all over the floor of the garage.

--

TBC


	4. Flashbacks

We've hit the halfway mark, here.

--

--

--

One day when Cartman was a senior - seventeen, nearly eighteen, and already accepted to a university - he suddenly _noticed_ Wendy.

He'd always been aware of her, of course - he'd been arguing with her over everything from Thanksgiving to sand monkeys as far back as elementary school, and her constant on-again-off-again relationship with Stan meant he, Kyle, and Kenny had to occasionally put up with her. Still, he'd never given her more than a passing, annoyed thought.

One afternoon he'd been sitting in the library, trying to study for a math test. It was hard to focus because he'd broken up with Heidi during lunch, after he'd eaten her Cheesy Poofs. She'd thrown a bitch fit of epic proportions, and Cartman was starting to wonder if he'd made a mistake. Sure, she wasn't as ambitious as he was, but who in this stupid town was?

It was also hard to focus because some bitch was yelling at the librarian.

Cartman scowled, turned around in his seat, and blinked. Of all the people to have a conniption in the middle of the library, he hadn't thought Wendy Testaburger would be one of them. She was always smiling and wheedling favors out of people, usually Stan, with coy looks - not screaming.

"NO, you stupid cunt! I need a book on French HISTORY, not a French dictionary! I know you must have failed at every other career endeavor to end up in a public high school library, but I am NOT going to let your incompetence hinder my studying for my French class!"

Cartman was intrigued.

But Cartman had no idea how to go about it, because he'd been dating Heidi for three years and thus never developed any techniques for asking girls out. He tried asking Kenny for help - in his own way, which had involved demands and death threats - and had been pissed off when he refused for Stan's sake. Stan was a wishy-washy idiot who stalked Wendy when they weren't going out and ignored her when they where.

Cartman spent so much time trying to figure it out, he forgot to study and failed his math test. Wendy surpassed him in class rank.

Cartman decided he had to get her attention before someone else - namely Stan - snatched her up again. He broke into school that evening with several buckets of paint he'd lifted from a Habitat for Lazy-Ass Hobos (as Cartman referred to it; others called it Habitat for Humanity).

The next morning the school found "FOR A GOOD TIME CALL WENDY" written across the football field. And there was a football game scheduled that evening.

Wendy hunted him down - Kenny had ratted him out - and screamed that they wouldn't cancel the game and couldn't clean the field in time, so everyone in South Park and North Park were going to see it. She kicked him in the balls and shouted that she was going to make him _pay_.

When he got home from school Wendy called him up and told him they were going on a date (supervised by Bebe, of course), ordered him to meet her at the theater, and said he better bring his wallet. Kenny somehow defied all reason and found out about the date during the ten minutes between Cartman got the phone call and left the house. Kenny insisted on coming along. Cartman found it was impossible to stop him - nothing could deter Kenny when it came to Bebe Stevens,

Their evening started with a particularly bad popcorn fight. Wendy ended up yelling that he was getting popcorn grease in her hair and turning the bucket upside down over his head. She would have stormed out right then and there, but a confused look around the theater confirmed that Bebe and Kenny had disappeared. Wendy decided storming out alone would be degrading, so she sat down with a huff and watched the movie.

Five minutes they were mocking Michael Bay's latest movie travesty, and they left the theater on considerably better terms. Cartman and Wendy walked to the parking lot, where they tapped on the fogged-up windows of Bebe's car and snickered at their friends' expense. They decided to drive to the football game after party, after Bebe had put her shirt back on and Kenny located his pants in the glove compartment.

Kyle, who'd been assuring Stan that if they'd let him off the bench then South Park might not have lost _so_ badly, had to comfort him when Cartman and Wendy walked in together. Stan went into some sort of hysterical fit because of the abundance of popcorn in Wendy's hair, and Kyle patted him on the head like one might pet an anxious little dog while trying to keep his eye rolls to a minimum.

Later, when Stan was puking into his mother's petunias because he'd been struck down by food poisoning, he groaned and rested his head against one of the back porch's posts.

"Everything in my life sucks except you," Stan informed Kyle.

"I'm flattered," Kyle said.

"We'll always be best friends, right?" he asked in a rather pitiful manner.

"Sure," Kyle said, smiling and petting his head again because he strongly suspected Stan had gotten drunk through osmosis. "Even if we hated each other."

--

One day when Cartman was a senior - seventeen, nearly eighteen, and just fired from another job - Kenny dragged him to another one of Stan's lame football games. Cartman didn't see the point in going. Stan always sat on the bench, and even if he were not to, Stan was an asshole and Cartman hated him. He wasn't about to cheer for him.

Halfway through the game Kenny crawled over the bleachers to chat up Bebe, who shouted "Don't make me get a restraining order, you creep!" and clubbed him to death with her purse. She and Wendy then turned around to glare at Cartman, like it was _his_ fault Kenny was a poor fucker. He scowled back at them and flipped them off.

The after party was held at the Marshes because there was always guaranteed a full fridge of beer. Cartman wandered around for a while, pissed at Kenny for getting himself killed again. Kenny was the only asshole he could stand talking to. He eventually stumbled into the kitchen, where he found Shelly Marsh, crying.

Cartman hung back by the door frame for a while before approaching her. "What's your problem, bitch?"

"None of your fucking business, turd-" she began, before she lifted her head and saw who it was. "Oh. Cartman." She wiped her nose on her sleeve. "Skyler broke up with me. Again."

Cartman wondered what was wrong with the Marsh children that made them fixate on one person for their entire romantic lives.

"Will you help me get back at him again?" Shelly asked, blowing her nose on her sleeve. Cartman thought it over. He couldn't help but feel a certain kinship toward Shelly, since they generally despised, and were despised by, everyone.

"Sure," he said, because there was no one to stay at the party for. "Why not?"

They went to Skyler's parent's house and Cartman broke a water pipe, thus flooding the basement where he lived. Shelly stood off to the side and laughed while Skyler stood out in the snow, soaking wet and bemoaning his drowning belongings. She looked over at Cartman and thanked him, and he said, "Whatever, skank."

Then she kissed him.

Cartman blinked, because at seventeen (nearly eighteen) he had never been kissed before - discounting three grade - and wasn't quite sure how to respond.

So he said, "Whatever, skank."

He fully expected her to say she'd gotten swept up in the moment, and now that she'd kissed him her interest had shriveled up and died. That, or punch him in the face.

Instead, she kissed him again.

Meanwhile Stan, who had obtained a sixth sense that let him know when Wendy was about to break it off again, had come up with a brilliant solution. He reasoned she couldn't break up with him if she couldn't find him, so he'd locked himself in his bedroom and posted a very unenthusiastic Kyle as guard.

Brilliant strategy.

When Wendy (who'd finally gotten tired of listening to Bebe describe how she was going to buy an attack dog if Kenny didn't back off) climbed the stairs looking for Stan, she instead found Kyle looking as if he'd been stapled to his bedroom door. She halted in front of him, cocked an eyebrow, sighed, and said "Kyle, move."

"Look, Wendy, just do me a little favor and don't break up with Stan."

"Kyle, it's none of your business."

"Of course it's my business! I have to put up with him every time you break his heart! Everyone knows you're just going to get back together again anyway, so why can't you just skip the breaking up part?"

"I am _not_ going to get back together with him!"

Kyle gave her a look.

"I'm not," she huffed, pouting. "Really this time. Stan's just too much of a drama queen."

"Heh," Kyle said, and couldn't help but crack a grin as he thought about the melodramatic way Stan had told him to not leave his post, even if Wendy threatened him with death or, even worse, castration. "He can be, yeah."

Wendy reached out for the doorknob, Kyle's hand shot out to stop her, and they stood in the hallway clasping hands and staring at each other until Kyle dropped her hand and backed up against the door, making sure it wasn't about to open and Stan wasn't going to stumble out and catch them.

"Stan's just going to have to get over it," Wendy said, smiling widely at him and heading back downstairs to listen to Bebe complain some more.

--

TBC


	5. Enter Stan

I'm reeeally looking forward to the next chapter. It's why I wrote this fic in the first place.

--

--

--

When Wendy Broflovski got back home, she made what she considered a valiant effort to do the laundry. Eventually she threw her tub of detergent against the wall with a muffled scream and punched the dryer. It was no use - Cartman had frustrated her to a point where she couldn't focus on menial household tasks.

What had truly rattled her was not that she'd enjoyed herself, or that Cartman had ruined everything by being himself, but that she'd found herself wishing he _hadn't_ ruined everything.

Cartman was a horrible man who'd spent his childhood killing people, spent his teen years stealing his mother's crack and eating cheeseburgers for breakfast, and only had a job because Kenny felt sorry for him. So how the hell was he able to read her so well? She'd thought whatever perceptive, manipulative skills he'd once possessed had been smoked out of him in his high school drug binge. Eric Cartman was supposed to have lost his charisma - the _only_ thing he'd ever had going for him.

But things _weren't_ going well between Kyle and herself. Cartman hadn't known how right he was when he said her marriage was in the toilet.

Wendy had been smug when Kyle had chosen her over Stan. She'd thought it was proof that he would put her above everything else in the world, which was what she'd always wanted in a relationship. But Kyle had begun to regret the choice he'd made, and resent her for making him make that choice. At the same time, Kyle's personality was grating on her last nerve. He was too non-confrontational with her, preferring to sit and stew instead of talking about what pissed him off. Wendy had always preferred arguing when something needed to be argued about. She felt it made people less irritable in the long run.

Wendy glared at the dented dryer, rubbed her hand, then went into the kitchen and did what she always did when she needed to unload: call Bebe.

Bebe had gone to college and studied zoology, specifically marine biology. She'd worked her ass off, but she'd found it impossible to shake the blond stigma. She'd had to settle for a job at the sea park in Denver just to defy her mother's expectation that a nice man would take care of her. Her boss always made her do the dolphin routine that required a bikini, because she was the only female employee without stretch marks.

Bebe complained about it a lot, but Wendy envied her. She'd escaped South Park (even if she'd only gotten as far as Denver) and she had her own job (even if she was grossly overqualified for it).

It took a moment for Bebe to pick up, and when she did Wendy immediately launched into a long explanation of Cartman's latest break from sanity. Bebe waited until she paused to breathe before saying, "Why, hello to you too, Wendy, how are you?" with a touch of sarcasm.

"He just sounded so sure when he said he loved me," Wendy mumbled. "Kyle never has."

"Look, Wendy, you scored a guy with an exceptionally hot ass. Can't you just be satisfied with that?"

"No," Wendy huffed. "What am I supposed to do about Cartman?"

"Well, we keep the dolphins on meds so that they won't flip out and go on a killing spree... again. I could steal some drugs for you."

"I could use a _serious_ suggestion here, Bebe," Wendy informed her irritably.

"Well, what do you want me to do about it? Hire a contract killer to knock Kyle off?"

"No," Wendy sighed. (Bebe was a tad worried that Wendy had taken that suggestion seriously.) "I just... I know I don't have anyone to blame but myself for how my life turned out. But I just can't help looking back and thinking, if I'd just done _one_ little thing differently, everything would've turned out so much better."

--

Cartman went home as Kenny had commanded him, got bitched at by Shelly, and spent another sleepless night on the couch. He spent the time thinking about Wendy - specifically, about the Monday after their first Kenny-and-Bebe-infested, Stan-crushing, sort-of-date.

He'd called her over the weekend, but her father had said she was 'out.' Cartman had been strongly suspicious of this, because she always went out with Bebe, and Bebe had spent the weekend with Kenny, whom Wendy had disliked ever since he made a bunch of sexually explicit snowmen at the park.

He'd hunted her down on Monday, in the same place he'd first decided she was worth pursuing: the library.

She had her books spread out over a table and was artfully ignoring his presence. She'd apparently gotten the books necessary to write her French paper, despite the librarian's best attempts to sabotage her.

"Don't sit down," Wendy had warned him.

Cartman had pulled out a chair and sat down.

"Go away," Wendy had snapped.

Cartman had rested her arms on the table, crossed them, leaned forward, and smiled at her. It had looked rather psychotic, which had been appropriate, because Cartman was generally his happiest when he'd just done something psychotic.

Wendy had glared in response. "Get your arm off of my research notes."

"Why should I?"

"You're _smudging_ them." She had sounded like this was the most heinous crime Cartman had ever committed, the Tenorman Incident included. He had lifted his arm and found that, sure enough, his sleeve had been decorated with black marks. Cartman had thought it looked like the City Wok menu. It should be noted that the City Wok menu did not used correct Chinese.

"What sort of psycho takes notes in pen?"

"I don't make mistakes." Wendy's nostrils had flared.

Cartman had moved the papers out of his way. "Why are you avoiding me, ho?"

"I told you," she had said. "I don't make mistakes."

"Ey!"

"We don't have anything in common," she had went on. "You may not have the fattest ass anymore, but you're still the biggest asshole. I'm not stupid, Cartman. Even if you're _not_ doing this to make Stan miserable-"

"I don't have to make Stan miserable; he does it just fine on his own." Wendy had cracked a reluctant smile. "C'mon, ho, we had fun at the movies."

"We spent the first half trying to kill each other with straws."

"But after that, we had fun."

She had blown out an annoyed breath of air. "I'm not just looking for _fun_. If I were, I'd still be with Mark. And we still don't have anything in common."

Cartman had rested his head against his arms to deliberate. Wendy had wrongly assumed this was a sign of defeat and had returned to her note-taking. She should have realized Cartman wasn't done yet, however. After a moment or two he had lifted his head again, that serial-killer-crazy smile back on his face.

" 'To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy.' "

Wendy had gaped at him.

"That's Thoreau."

"Mm-hm."

"_You_ read Henry David Thoreau?"

"He was good enough to win a Save Our Fragile Planet contest, wasn't he?" It had taken a decade, But Cartman had finally admitted Wendy was right about the whole thing.

Wendy had looked dumbfounded.

Cartman had leaned forward and his smile had gotten a little more psychotic. "So are we enemies?"

... But he'd never ruined his sweatshirt for the greater Wendy good, and he never admitted to reading Thoreau. He was never obsessively paranoid about their first time.

(Which he had been because, despite his loud bragging to the contrary, he was still a virgin, and because Wendy had been devirginized a year earlier by one of her in-between-Stan-boyfriends, Mark, MARK, that asshole with the slut sister whom Kyle complained about because he got better grades, and Cartman supposed it was better than if Stan had scored with Wendy, though the thought was laughable because Stan was sexually retarded, but Cartman was still the sort of person who HAD to be the best at whatever he did, and when they finally did sleep together he'd nearly ruined it by his unfortunate tendency to fuck everything up; of course, it was thanks to that particular ability that none of this had transpired now. It was all in his head.)

He'd never held her back from jumping on Kenny and ripping out his balls by punching a hole through his ass when Bebe announced that, yes, 98 percent accuracy rate was still not a 100 percent guarantee. And Wendy had certainly never stood up in front of their family and (her) friends and God, in that beautiful (expensive) white dress, and screamed at Stan that his moping was ruining her reception, and if he didn't cut it out then so help her, she'd take the term 'Bridezilla' to a whole new level. It had been mortifying for Wendy, Stan, Wendy's parents, the priest, the band, and in fact all the guests.

Cartman had thought he'd found religion.

Cartman laid on the lumpy couch, watched the digital clock on the VCR blink away the night, and thought about the small moments, too. Like how she'd insisted he visit his family in Nebraska at least once a year, though he would have liked nothing better than to forget he was related to a bunch of fat bastards, and how close he came to being one himself.

And now he WAS one. And none of it had happened. All he had with Wendy in _this_ universe was a coffee date that hadn't gone nearly as well as he'd hoped.

He'd thought he'd be able to fix this universe. Win Wendy over (possibly killing Kyle in the process), get in shape, steal another invention - but he'd lost twenty years. By the time things would have improved to an acceptable level (perfection), he'd be _fifty_.

Cartman realized there was really only one way to fix what he had ruined so spectacularly by going back in time: go back in time again.

--

The moment Kenny's back was turned, Cartman climbed into the car he was supposed to be working on and drove out into the night (metaphorically speaking).

At least, that was the plan. The funny thing about cars in a car garage is that none of them work properly, and a good number of them don't start. Cartman swore as loudly as he could without attracting Kenny's attention.

Cartman moved stealthily to _another_ car, and drove _that_ one out of the garage. Kenny ran out after him, stopped in the middle of the street in front of the shop, waved his arms, hopped up and down, and screamed obscenities at him, every other word being 'fat.' Cartman watched his impressive display in the rearview mirror. He was tempted to back up over Kenny, but he had a much more pressing matter at hand.

When Wendy answered the pounding on her front door, she was not at all surprised to see Cartman standing there. She frowned at him. "Cartman-"

"_Eric_."

Wendy rolled her eyes. "Fine, _Eric_," she said, conceding. "I thought I made it clear that I never wanted to see you again."

"Okay, look, we both said some things we didn't mean..."

Wendy gave him a look.

"Well, I meant it all, but I didn't mean to piss you off so much."

She sighed. "What do you want, Eric?" She glanced around him (which was very hard to do) and said, "Oh, is our car fixed?"

"Huh?" Cartman asked, looking back at his getaway car. "Wait, I stole _KYLE'S_ car?"

"_Stole?_" Wendy snapped.

"Yeah, he said casually. "I wanted to see if you were still up for running away."

"The fact you are _stealing my car_ aside, I was NEVER 'up for running away.'" Curiosity got the better of her. "... Where were you planning on going?"

"It wasn't a 'where' so much as a 'when,'" Cartman said, grinning.

--

"Stop here," Cartman commanded.

"Kyle's parents' house?" Wendy gave him a quizzical look.

"No, ho, the house next door."

Wendy glared at him for the nick name, but put the car into park and shut off the ignition nonetheless. Wendy had refused to let Cartman drive her car to the destination.

Cartman heaved himself out of the car - the thought that he was going to be fit again soon was making him a little giddy - and let himself into the Broflovskis neighbor's backyard. Wendy trailed after him.

"So, she said, as he broke the frame off of the screen door, "you're from some alternate future."

Cartman had spent the brief car ride explaining as well as he could.

"Yes."

"Where we're married."

"Yes," he said, reaching in, unlocking the door, and letting himself inside. He held the door open for her, like a gentleman.

"_We're_ married?"

"_Yes_," Cartman said testily.

"... _Really?_" Wendy asked after following him silently down to the basement.

"Yes, damn it!"

"So you ruined the future by going back in time, and now you think the best way to fix the future is by going back in time?"

"YES. What's your point?"

Wendy shrugged and sat down at one of their mirrors, going through their stage makeup. It didn't make a whole lot of sense to her, but then, the simple fact she was in that basement didn't make any sense to her. She was breaking the law. Trespassing. But for the first time in her life, she didn't feel aggravated at all.

Maybe Eric was right.

And if he'd finally suffered that mental collapse they'd all known he was destined to have, she could tell the police she was his hostage, not his accomplice.

"A-ha!" Cartman said triumphantly, carrying a handful of what looked like junk.

"What's that?" Wendy questioned.

"Everything I need to make a time machine," he said, beaming. He cleared off a table by shoving the Star Trek paraphernalia onto the floor, denting its original packaging and irreversibly damaging its resale value.

For the next forty minutes Wendy watched him work fervently, assembling the random pieces of dork crap. The focused, intense look on his face was almost... attractive.

"All right," Cartman said, straightening and looking over at her. "This is it."

Wendy didn't know why, but she was _positive_ it wasn't a mental collapse.

Cartman hit the button. Wendy hitched her breath.

Nothing happened.

"... I'm going back home, Cartman," she said after a very long silence. "I need to make chicken cacciatora before my husband gets home." She climbed to her feet wearily. Cartman twisted around to face her.

"You're _leaving?_"

"I... don't know what I was thinking," she said, shaking her head sadly. "Coming out here. I guess I just felt... young again. Like we were back in school, and some crazy, irrational, unbelievable thing was going to happen. You made me feel like it was possible, but..." she sighed and adjusted the strap of her purse. "I'm an adult now. I need to be sensible. I'm going home before Kyle worries about me."

Cartman gaped. "You can't just... _leave!_"

"I need to go home and make dinner," she reiterated. Wendy had gotten halfway up the stairs when Cartman barked, "Wait!"

She sighed. "Yes?"

"Did you say chicken cacciatora?" he demanded.

"... Yes..." she said, a little confused.

"That's it!" Cartman said. "I forgot the tomato sauce! Ho, you're a genius."

"Well, yes," Wendy said, though she was too busy trying to figure out how tomato sauce was a component to time travel to properly process the compliment.

--

Stan hated his sister.

It was his day off, and what had he woken up to? Shelly, yelling at him to come down and do his duty as her brother by keeping his brother-in-law from cheating on her.

_Brother-in-law_. No matter how many times he heard it, it still repulsed him. Eric Cartman. And him. Forever forced into each other's company because of a blood relative he'd never cared for to begin with. Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays - all of them ruined by Cartman's presence. Cartman's slurs, racial or otherwise. Cartman eating all the food. Cartman just being Cartman.

It's not like it was supposed to end up this way, Stan thought, as he clenched both his teeth and the steering wheel. He'd wanted to be a lawyer in Manhattan, not a reporter for the afternoon Denver news. He'd always thought he'd make a good lawyer - he'd exhibited an ability to talk even the densest of people around to the truth since grade school.

But ever since the Kyle... incident, he'd just grabbed his things and driven out of town, instead of going to Mr. Broflovski for assistance with his college application like he'd planned.

Stan would have ignored his sister's demands and crawled back into bed if she hadn't mentioned who Cartman was supposedly cheating on her with: Wendy Broflovski. (He still hated calling her that.) Stan found the idea of _Wendy_ leaving _Kyle_ for _Cartman_ was just too good to miss.

He was on his way to his sister's house when he spotted Wendy's car park on the side of the street. Stan slowed down, then, because there was no traffic, came to a stop and gave it a bemused look. If she were visiting her in-laws, it would be parked in their driveway, not in front of the house next door. Stan climbed out and approached the car, peering in through windows. He didn't see anything out of the ordinary, and was about to leave when he heard some highly irregular noises from within the house.

It sounded like a fat asshole trying to pound a square peg into a round hole, and when that didn't work, yelling at it.

--

"He _stole_ my fucking car?"

"Sorry, man," was all Kenny could say.

"Why the HELL haven't you fired him yet?" Kyle demanded.

Kenny shrugged a little helplessly. Kyle fumed and looked out the passenger-side window of Kenny's truck. Honestly, it was question Kenny had asked himself many times. Cartman was far more trouble than he was worth... especially lately. Maybe he was finally coming unglued.

Kyle snapped to attention suddenly, jabbing a finger against the window. "My car! Huh, he didn't get very... far... oh. Oh, shit. Shit!" Kyle slid down as far in his seat as he could and hissed at Kenny, "Keep going!"

"It's too late, man," Kenny said with sympathy. "He's already seen us."

Kyle swore. He hesitated for as long as he could after Kenny parked and climbed out, then unbuckled his seat belt with a soft groan and left the car to face Stan.

Stan glared a moment and stuffed his hands into his pockets before addressing Kenny. "What are you doing here?"

"Fatass stole Kyle's car," Kenny supplied. "What're _you_ doing in South Park, man?"

"Looking for fatass," he said. Stan paused to give his next words the maximum impact. "Shelly called me and said he was cheating on her with Wendy."

Stan took personal satisfaction in the look on Kyle's face, which quickly transformed into a scowl. He marched up to the front door and threw his weight against it with the intent off breaking it down.

He hopped away from the unyielding door, rubbing his sore arm and repeating "Fuck" like a mantra. Stan smirked, reached over, turned the doorknob in his hand, and opened the unlocked door. Kyle looked like he would have dearly loved to sock him, if his arm weren't dead from the shoulder down.

Kenny hopped up the steps, ignoring them both, and shouted "CARTMAN!" into the house. It was only a moment before they heard the loud, pounding footsteps that could only belong to Cartman - and so they were surprised when two people emerged from within the house.

"_Wendy!_" Kyle yelped, too stunned to be completely furious. Wendy blinked a few times, surprised.

"What are you all doing here?"

"God damn it you guys, serioushlay..." Cartman griped. He was holding what looked like the mutant child of a blender and a toaster.

"What am _I_ doing here? What hell are _YOU _doing here!"

"Cartman," Kenny said, grinding his teeth while Stan hung back to watch the show, "why the fuck did you steal Kyle's car?"

"Ey, I didn't steal shit. It's in Wendy's possession now, isn't it?"

"Cartman, that is the shittiest lie I have ever heard out of you," Kenny said, making a face.

"It's true; _I_ drove us over here," Wendy spoke up, a crease appearing between her eyebrows.

Stan observed the interesting color Kyle turned. Kyle struggled to remain calm. "And _why_ are you here?" he demanded.

Wendy pursed her lips. "Eric's from the future... sort of."

Deafening silence.

"It's true, assholes!" Cartman snapped. "I couldn't explain it in simple enough terms for idiots like you to understand, but basically, I need to go back to when we were about eight or nine years old and-"

Kyle wrenched the time machine from Cartman's hands and got ready to smash it against the floor.

"DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE BREAK IT, JEW!"

"FUCK YOU, FATASS!"

"Stan!" Cartman commanded, jabbing a finger at Kyle. "Get my time machine from that maniac. Talk him down before he harms the innocents!"

"No way," Stan said, making a face. "I don't even believe in time travel. And I'm talking to that asshole."

Cartman searched his mind desperately, trying to think of a reason that would convince Stan. And then, suddenly, it was so obvious.

"If I go back, we wouldn't be brothers-in-law."

Stan yanked the time machine from Kyle's hands (just in time) and handed it over to Cartman in a second.

"_Thank_ you," he said with heavy sarcasm. "Now, if you'll excuse me..."

Cartman blinked out of time.

--

Nine-year-old Stan Marsh had just sat done to a breakfast of Cheerios when the door burst open. He jumped about a foot in the air, dumping the Cheerios all over the floor, and whipped around to stare at the incredibly fat man who'd just ran into his kitchen.

"You!" the fat man growled, pointing a finger straight at him. "How old are you?"

"... Nine?" Stan said, between gaping.

Cartman grinned. "Sweet."

--

TBC


	6. The Good Ol' Days

To avoid confusion: nine-year-old will be referred to as Cartman. Thirty-something time traveler with be referred to as Eric.

--

--

--

"I don't believe for a _second_ he's who he says he is. We've been through this all before with that Motivationcorp crap!"

Motivationcorp. Eric scowled into his coffee. The company that had made him change his life for the better... and then the far, far worse.

"Mmphf."

"I dunno, Stan, I've got to agree with Kenny on this one. I can't imagine Cartman _not_ growing up to be a fat, ugly slob."

"EY!"

"Look, kid," Eric said, ignoring the enraged squawk of his younger self and turning around in his seat to glare at the Jew rat that would grow up to steal Wendy away from him. "I don't have any qualms with killing you. In fact, your death would vastly improve the quality of my life. The only reason I can think of for NOT killing you is that you have the same blood type as me, so you're a valuable source of blood, organs, and bone marrow, but it's not like I can't get that somewhere else. In summation: don't give me a reason to lock you in a car trunk and drive you into Stark's Pond, because I swear to God I will."

"You don't scare me," Kyle told him snidely - though he took a step to the right so that Kenny was standing between them.

Once Eric had confirmed the date with Stan as Stan cleaned the soggy breakfast cereal off the floor, Stan had demanded to know who he was, and what he was doing in his kitchen. Being Stan, he'd had to be a midget drama queen about it and not believe him, sure it was Motivationcorp all over again.

It was Sunday, Eric had discovered. He dropped by his mother's house and "borrowed" some money, then went down to Benny's for some coffee. Time travel tended to turn his stomach. The nine-year-old versions of Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and himself had assembled and begun discussing the validity of his claim during his third cup. He'd been able to ignore them until halfway through his fourth.

"No way that asshole's me," Cartman said, pointing an accusatory finger. "He's all fat and stuff."

"Mrmphaft."

"Fuck you, Kenny!"

"I'm fat because of _you_," Eric said, scowling at his younger self. He didn't know what Kenny had said - apparently deciphering what he said while he wore a hood was NOT like riding a bike - but he had a fairly good idea he'd called the nine-year-old Cartman fat. And he had to say, he agreed entirely. "You completely fucked up my life, you little shit."

"Ey, don't try and pin your fuck ups on me, fatass!"

"So you ruined your life and now you hate yourself?"

"Shut up, Jew!" both of the Eric Cartmans snapped.

"I still don't believe you," Stan repeated, crossing his arms. "Prove it."

"I don't have to prove anything to you little shits."

"Ha! Because you can't."

"Of course I can't," Eric growled. "The timeline's all fucked up. That's why I'm here."

"I think you're here to mooch off of my mom," Cartman said, fuming. "That's _MY_ toy money you're using to pay for that coffee."

"Well you better get used to it," Eric said, grabbing the front of Cartman's sweater and pulling him to his eye level. They sneered at one another. "I'm not going back to my own time until it's FIXED. And I've got nothing but free time, kid. You slack off on your homework or start gorging yourself on cookies, and I'll be there to beat your fat little head in."

Cartman bristled. "Oh, you think so, asshole? You can't watch me ever second."

"I can if I move in."

"Ha! Mom would never agree to that!"

"Oh, what a wonderful idea!" Mrs. Cartman gushed not fifteen minutes later. "It would be so nice to have a man around the house."

"Mom!"

"We could set you up in my room..." she said, laying a hand on Eric's arm.

"Um, no, I'll just sleep on the couch," he said, edging away from her. Having his own mother hit on him was a level of ick he just did not want to approach. He'd already been married to Shelly for three days - that was all he could take.

--

"That asshole! That asshole-y... asshole!"

"Mppmmfff."

"Do you know what that fat bastard _did_ all day yesterday, you guys? _Do_ you?"

"Yes, because you've been screaming about it all morning," Stan said.

"Well I'll tell you! He followed me around and wouldn't let me watch TV until I did my homework, and he wouldn't let me eat any powdered doughnut pancake surprise, and then he made me _brush_ my _teeth_ and go to bed at a reasonable hour!"

"Yeah, he sounds like Hitler incarnate," Stan said with great sarcasm.

"No, Hitler was kewl. This guy's like a fat, non-wetback version of Millan. It's the fucking Dog Whisper all over again, except instead of pinching me on the neck he chucks things at my head!"

"This may be the greatest thing to ever happen."

"Fuck you, Kyle!"

Kyle glanced over at Stan. "You don't still think this is a Motivationcorp plot, do you?"

"Well..." Stan began, looking a little unsure.

"It isn't; this con artist is just stealing my toy money! Motivationcorp sent that buttlicker in the suit with the bullshit story of studying and staying away from drugs and alcohol, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember, it happened three days ago," Eric growled, approaching the bus stop where the four boys were waiting. "Worst fucking mistake of my life, and that includes not pulling the plug on Kyle when he was in the hospital to get his tonsils removed."

"It happened _months_ ago," Stan said, his skepticism restored.

"I told you little fucker, I'm time traveling. It was three days ago for me." Eric paused, it suddenly hitting him. Four days ago Wendy had been his wife and he had been rich and handsome and powerful and the entire _country_ had been between him and Kyle. His life had been perfect four _days_ ago.

"What the hell are you doing here, you fat bastard?" Cartman snapped. Eric glared at the one who'd ruined his perfect life.

"What the hell does it look like I'm doing, porky? I'm following you to school."

--

Mrs. Garrison blinked. She stared at the obese man that had squeezed himself into a desk behind Eric Cartman, and was backhanding the fat boy every time he glanced at other students' papers.

"Who the hell are you?" she finally drawled.

"I'm Eric Cartman from a horrible alternate universe. I've come back to the past to fix the time stream."

All of the students' eyes flickered over to him. They gave him the same blank stare they gave every oddity they encountered.

"Oooh," Clyde said.

"Well do you have a visitor's pass?" Mrs. Garrison demanded, her hands on her hips. "I can't have time travelers wandering in whenever they feel like it."

"... Yes," Eric lied.

"Well all right then," she said. "Now, children, it's time for you all to go to the gym for career day, so that you little bastards can have a glimmer of hope for your future before you all inevitably become retail clerks, plumbers, or - God forbid - elementary school teachers."

_Or car mechanics_, Eric thought bitterly as he followed after Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman. He kicked Cartman in the back of the leg to make him walk faster, to Kyle's utter delight.

"Career day is so gay," Cartman complained, rubbing his shin and fantasizing about the fat bastard's horrific demise.

"Well, we already know you're going to grow up to be a fat time traveling car repairman," Kyle said, snickering. Eric decided that proved it: Kyle's bastard Jew-ratness transcended time and space.

Kenny wandered off while the other three moved from booth to booth, discussing the pros and cons of a profession in juggling various flaming objects. Cartman was naturally drawn toward the "Be a Cult Leader!" booth, and he flipped through a brochure.

"What do I grow up to be, anyway?" Kyle asked, looking around at the booths with disinterest.

"Super Jew," Eric grunted as he tried to wrestle the "Join The Cult Today!" flyer away from Cartman.

"... Asshole," Kyle muttered, and went to join Stan at the pro bono lawyer booth.

Eric held the flyer up above his head triumphantly, keeping it out of Cartman's reach. He quickly ripped it in two and disposed of it in a garbage can. No way was he going to create a future where he was the next generation of Charlie Mason ho. He ignored Cartman while he swore at him - which made Cartman angrier, as he hated to be ignored - and looked around the gymnasium.

Eric had no idea what Kyle did in the fucked-up universe, but his car was a piece of crap and he lived in South Park, so he doubted it was as nice as the job he had in Manhattan. Stan was a newscaster in Denver instead of a New York defense lawyer. Kenny was a bitter car mechanic instead of an obsessive father of two with a cushy job.

He'd been too busy not caring about anyone but himself (and Wendy) to notice, but _everyone_ was worse off in that alternate future. He was helping _everyone_ by fixing the timeline, wasn't he?

Eric shuddered and gripped his stomach, fighting the sudden wave of nausea. He felt... unclean. Helping people, ugh. The sacrifices he made.

Kenny had wandered back over and mumbled something that made Stan get all pissy again.

"Dude, you can't grow up to be a serial killer! How did that nut job Jacartha get a booth, anyway?"

--

It was a beautiful Monday afternoon. The weather was nice, the homeless were out of sight, and the old were off the streets. It was the sort of day that any adult would look back on and regret squandering.

"God, I am so _bored_."

"We could go to my house and play game sphere."

Eric had sat down on a park bench and watched Clyde cry after falling down skating, Token stuff a handful of snow down the back of Craig's shirt, and the girls construct a snowpeople family.

Kyle and Stan had halfheartedly chucked snowballs at various targets: a tree, a rock, Pip. But that had proved unexciting, and now they were ready for realistically rendered blood and gore.

"Ey, fatass! We're going back to my house!" Stan called.

"Screw you guys!" Cartman hissed, rolling a snowball and inching toward his target.

"What the hell is he doing?"

"Throwing snowballs at the girls."

"Forget him, then." Kyle looked around. "Where'd Kenny go?"

"Snow drift," Stan said, pointing. "Cartman threw a snowball with a rock in it and, well..."

"Killed him?"

"Yeah."

"Fat bastard."

"_Cartman!_" Stan yelled. "Forget it, man, let's just go to my house."

"Quiet, assholes!" Cartman stage whispered. The only thing separating him from the snowman-building Wendy was a tree.

"Does he really think that's going to conceal his tremendous ass?" Kyle asked. He and Stan snickered until Eric threw a rock at Stan's head. He would have thrown it at Kyle, but Stan was closer and Eric wasn't exactly the model of arm strength. Arm flab, maybe.

"Hey!" Stan snapped, rubbing his head. Kyle looked over.

"Aren't you going to smack Cartman for harassing the girls?" Kyle asked. Eric decided he didn't like his tone. Kyle was obviously deriving _way_ too much joy from his younger self's pain.

"No," Eric grunted. He wasn't going to _force_ himself to be nice to Wendy. He didn't want something like that to be turned into a chore.

Eric, Stan, and Kyle watched as Cartman burst out from behind the tree. They watched as he smacked Wendy upside the head with the snowball, watched her shriek, and watched her expression turn murderous while Cartman pointed and laughed.

Then they watched her heave the snowman head she'd been rolling above her own head and chase Cartman down as he fled. He didn't really stand a chance - Cartman was not designed for running. He tripped over Kenny's prone body, which sent the rats that had been gnawing on the corpse in all different directions. Cartman only had time to roll himself onto his back before Wendy dropped the snowman's head on his face, brushed her hands on her legs, and left, pushing herself between Stan and Kyle as she went.

Cartman sat there, his legs sprawled over Kenny's body, sputtering and wiping ice off of his face while muttering "Fucking hippies... all of them out to get me..."

Eric, Stan, and Kyle approached him, and Eric sighed while Stan and Kyle started hurling insults at Cartman. It was clearly going to take a lot of work to fix the future.

--

TBC


	7. Exit All

Last chapter!

Dedicated to the very awesome Shuggie. Love you lots, Shug-hug.

--

--

--

"All right, asshole. I have a proposition for you."

Eric looked up from his coffee and the morning paper as his nine-year-old self entered the kitchen, stuffed into a suit that had to strain to stay around his gut. Perhaps the most depressing part of this entire experience - and there were many depressing things about this experience - was the inescapable truth that he had never in his life been big boned.

"Normally I respect a good con artist. But you're screwing_ me_ over by taking money from my mother they would otherwise be spent on me. So I'm prepared to offer you twenty dollars, right now, as well as a guarantee they I wouldn't seek retribution, if you get out of my life."

"Not until it's fixed," Eric said, returning to the newspaper.

"...I'll fix _you_," Cartman growled on his way out, loosening his tie.

--

"Thank you for agreeing to join me, gentlemen."

"_Agreeing to join you?_ You jumped Stan and sent Kenny and me ransom notes!" Kyle yelled, pissed off. Stan, who was rubbing a sore spot on his jaw and glaring, was rather pissed off as well. If Cartman hadn't snuck up on him from behind, he knew he would've been able to kick his ass.

Kenny just hung back with an air of disinterest.

"Whatever," Cartman said, flapping a hand at them. "I asked you all here to discuss my great and brilliant plan to get rid of that impostor."

"We aren't helping you with shit!" Kyle growled.

"Why the fuck did you have to JUMP me?" Stan demanded. "It doesn't even make any SENSE."

"Okay, you guys, seriously. You need to stop living in the past. Start focusing on the impostor-free near future."

"Mghhif?"

"Yeah, what the fuck _are_ you talking about, fatass?"

"I'm talking about getting rid of that fat asshole once and for all! Now, Stan, I need you to get a gun from your uncle's gun shop. Kenny, you distract my mother. Then Kyle holds a pillow over his head and-"

"Cartman, God damn it," Kyle said, exasperated. "Why is murder always your solution to every problem?"

"That sounds an awful lot like you plot to kill your mother," Stan pointed out.

"Yeah, you even think up an original idea?"

"Ey! _Fuck_ you guys, you don't know what it's like! I don't have the time; that fat bastard is ALWAYS hovering around me! I can't take it anymore! I'm going to go insane."

"Mtfrphat."

"Yeah, too late for that."

"Fuck you, Kenny! And Kyle!"

"_Stan_ said that," Kyle snapped.

"Fuck you anyway!"

"Seriously, Cartman," Kyle said, crossing his arms. "Even _you_ should realize it isn't a good idea to kill your future self."

"He _isn't_ Cartman from the future!" Stan said at the same time Cartman said "He _isn't_ me from the future!"

"Mhfffphmm."

"Yeah, if the XXXL shoes fit..." Kyle repeated, rolling his eyes skyward.

Cartman socked Kenny in the shoulder. "Shut up, asshole!"

"Cartman, we aren't helping you kill _anyone_," Stan said. "Especially if you're going to jump me and tie me up in your basement," he added, always the reasonable one of the group.

"Well fine! I guess if you guys won't even commit a little homicide for me, than we aren't friends!"

"Mpph."

"Oh, yeah."

"Not even friendly acquaintances."

"... Hate you guys so much..."

--

Eric came into the kitchen for more coffee, and instead found Cartman scooping the coffee grounds out of the tin and replacing them with rat poison.

He froze when Eric came in. Cartman looked at him, then at the rat poison. Then a (what he considered to be) angelic smile broke out on his face and he offered him the tin. "Thirsty for a little coffee?"

"Kid," Eric said, "just how stupid do you think I am? Now go put on your shoes; you're going to get some exercise, God damn it."

--

Cartman came up with his next brilliant plan while that fat impostor bastard made him run around the neighborhood. He drove behind him on a bicycle so that Cartman couldn't slow down with getting run over. He finally got to stop when he (brilliantly) threw himself into a clump of bushes. The fat asshole couldn't follow him in, not on a bike!

Of course, the bushes were full of killer squirrels. Figures.

When Cartman got back to the house - after bathing in Betadine and plastering himself with Mel Gibson band-aids - he began working on an elaborate system of levers and pulleys that would, when set off, fling the toaster into that sadistic fatass's face.

Unfortunately, he had only _just_ gotten the toaster attached when the fatass walked into the kitchen.

"What's with all the ropes?" he asked, looking around.

"Ropes? I don't see any ropes. Hey, how would you like some toast?"

"Come upstairs; you have a test on McGiver tomorrow and you haven't seen _Breakfast at Tiffany's_," Eric said, seizing Cartman by the collar.

"An english muffin? A scone? A _crumpet?_" Cartman said desperately as he was hauled up the stairs.

--

After tying Cartman to a chair so that he had no choice but to watch _Breakfast at Tiffany's_, Eric went back downstairs. He no longer trusted anything in the kitchen, so he sat down to watch TV instead. He flipped through the cartoons and sitcoms with a sense of nostalgia, but also a realization of just how crappy South Park closed-circuit TV stations used to be. It was weird watching the news - certain things he remembered were not being reported, and even more things that he didn't remember _were_ being reporting.

He was in the past, but it still wasn't _his_ past. His past had told him to fuck himself while stuffing its face with cookies.

There was a knocking on the door. Eric threw down the controller and shouted "I'll answer it!" - otherwise his mother would have stumbled out of the shower so that he wouldn't have to "inconvenience" himself. Seeing his mother trip over herself to tend to his nine-year-old self's needs was a little off-putting. He'd never thought of himself as a difficult son, even when he had been.

Kyle was at the door. He craned his head up and said "Good, it's you," when he answered.

"What is it?"

"I thought it was only fair to warn you that fatass - erm, Cartman - is trying to kill you. I don't know a lot about time travel, but killing yourself sounds like something you might want to avoid."

Eric stared at him, and then Eric had the most disturbing revelation of his entire life. Kyle was the best friend he had. Obviously they were not _best friends_, or good friends, or even friends at all. But in terms of someone who cared if he fucked himself up... neither Stan nor Kenny had dropped by to give him a heads up, and if he knew himself at all, he would have revealed his murder plot to all three of them.

Out of everyone in the town of South Park, Kyle Broflovski cared the most about what happened to Eric Cartman. And Kyle _hated_ him.

Eric was glad he hadn't gotten any coffee or toast, because he was suddenly feeling sick to his stomach. Why couldn't he have just stayed in his CEO office and not gone back in time? He could have avoided all these stomach-turning epiphanies.

"I already figured that out, little Jew," he bit out. It wasn't the worst thing he'd ever called Kyle - not by a long shot - but he scowled up at him anyway.

"So," Kyle said nastily, "how'd the fat bastard thing work out for you, anyway? Are you half as miserable as you deserve to be?"

Eric glared. Then Eric stepped to the side, hooked his finger on one of the elaborate ropes his younger self had set up, and pulled. The toaster went flying from it's place on the kitchen counter, sailed through the living room, out the door, and conked Kyle in the head.

"Ow! FUCK!"

Eric closed the door.

--

Cartman hated the taste of duct tape.

But _Breakfast at Tiffany's _had been worse, so he'd gnawed through the tape binding him, used the chair he'd been tied to to break the window, and leapt from his window to escape.

Cartman walked around, trying to put as much distance between himself and that maniac as possible. That bastard wasn't going to stop until he had completely ruined his life. Cartman was already forgetting what a fried chicken sundae tasted like. And he hadn't gotten to play with his Wii since that fatass had burst into Stan's kitchen.

No one could understand the pain he was suffering.

Cartman kicked a rock and then hopped away, swearing. Now he had five crushed toes on top of it all. He just wanted to go home and sit on his couch and eat something. If a genie showed up at that every moment, that was all he would ask for. ... Well, after he asked him to kill Kyle and give him ten million dollars.

Was that really asking so much?

The asshole couldn't even die properly. He couldn't have him hanging around for the rest of his life - _he'd_ die. Cartman scowled and dug his hands into his pockets, then he looked up and realized he'd walked to Kyle's neighborhood. He was just turning back around - that Jew rat was the _last _person he wanted to see right now, he'd rather deal with that fat con artist - when he caught sight of the house next door to him. He remembered those Star Trek dorks.

He remembered Timmy.

Then he started to grin.

--

Eric was slumbering peacefully on the couch. It was actually a very nice couch. This makes sense, because Cartman spent a large percentage of his life on the couch, and he wasn't going to sit on some crappy rock-hard cushion. He needed something to mold to his ass. But that was all beside the point.

Eric was slumbering peacefully on the couch when Cartman snuck in with the time machine he'd liberated from the Star Trek dorks. He woke with a start when Cartman duct taped it to his stomach.

"Wha...?"

"Let's see how you handle it when you actually DO time travel, you bag of douche!"

Eric's eyes flew open. "Don't you stupid little-!"

And then he was out in the snow, and Kenny, Wendy, Stan, and Kyle were staring at him expectantly.

He quickly searched himself. Still fat. No fat wad of cash, just the depressing kind of fat. No time machine. He'd held that time machine in his chubby nine-year-old hands, and instead of copyrighting it and making a fortune he'd used it to get rid of someone who was inconveniencing his life.

How very like him.

Eric Cartman hung his head. "I hate myself."

"That makes it unanimous, then," Kyle said. Wendy frowned at him. Kyle didn't notice, as he was busy giving Kenny pointed looks.

Kenny sighed and ran an exasperated hand through his hair. "Look. Cartman. You're fired, man. I already die enough as it is; I'm going to get a stress tumor or something with you around stealing cars and... whatever else you've done lately. Don't tell me, I don't want to know."

Cartman got to his feet with difficulty - he was still an obese man, after all. Immediately after ridding himself of the large house guest, nine-year-old Eric Cartman had no doubt made his mother cook him a celebration ham.

Kyle was giving him that Jew bastard look. Kenny was rubbing his neck and looking up at the sky. Stan was visibly disappointed that he was still a relative of Cartman. Wendy... well, Cartman couldn't quite bring himself to look at her.

"Okay, man. Let's get you back to Shelly so I can get the hell out of this town," Stan said. He was not relishing the screaming fit his older sister was going to throw when she found out her husband had gotten fired by the only boss who'd ever put up with him for longer than a week.

"No," Cartman said.

"What the hell do you mean, no?"

"I mean, fuck you and fuck your sister, I'm not going back to _that_."

"Hey! That's my sister you're talking about!"

"Hence 'fuck your sister,' dip shit."

"So what, you're going to go back in time _again?_" Kyle asked, then snorted as if this were hysterically funny. Which it was not.

"_No_, heeb." Cartman grit his teeth. Fuck his nine-year-old self anyway! He wasn't going to let anyone get in the way of his financial success, not even himself! Enough of this pussying around, trying to fix his mistake! If business had taught him anything it was to press on, even if the company's stock tanks and debt collectors sneak into his house under the cloak of darkness, hoping to get a couple of his toes and instead get a face full of his wife's cake mixer.

So what if his life was fucked? He'd go to Hollywood, or Las Vegas, or Salt Lake City, or some other cesspool of sin. There were few acts he would not perform for money. He'd heave every fat inch of himself back up to the top by any means necessary.

So what if Wendy was married to Kyle? He'd ride back in on a blaze of glory when he was rich and fit again, then he'd ride back out with her in his arms and Kyle's head on a pike.

"Screw you guys, I'm getting the hell out of this town," Cartman said confidently.

"You don't have a car, fatass," Kyle said snidely. "I'm sure as hell not letting you have mine."

"I'll walk," Cartman snapped.

"_Walk._"

"It's the original exercise!" he snapped again. He hesitated, glanced at Wendy quickly, then pointed at Kyle and said, "Unlike _this_ asshole... Well, I'm not going to promise to take care of you. Because I know you're more than capable od taking care of yourself. So..." Cartman glared at Kyle, Stan, and Kenny. "Ugh...!" He turned around and stomped off. The other four stared at him as he trudged down the street through the snow.

"Well, that takes care of that," Kyle said confidently.

"Kyle, I'm leaving you."

"... What?"

Kyle gaped at Wendy, whose face was set.

"I think it's time we dropped this charade, don't you? The only reason you haven't asked me for a divorce yet is because..." she glanced at Stan. "Well, because you don't like to admit when you're _wrong_." She dug into her purse for her car keys, climbed into the car Cartman had stolen, and sped down the street after him.

"... Shit, man," Kenny said, blinking a few times. Kyle, by contrast, wasn't blinking at all. "... Hey, when Bebe comes down to pick up Wendy's stuff, do you mind if I-"

"Kenny... just fuck off."

"Fine," Kenny grunted. "I have to get back to the shop, anyway." He climbed into his car, and then he was gone.

Silence engulfed Kyle. He was dimly aware of the fact both of the cars had left, and he was now stranded. Next door to his parents' house. But stranded none the less.

He heard the snow crunch behind him, and then Stan said, "Hey."

"What?" Kyle said, preparing himself for the verbal and/or physical assault that was sure to follow. His wife had just left him for Cartman - _Cartman!_ - and Stan was sure to be thrilled.

"Want to get a drink?"

"What?"

"A drink."

"... What?"

Stan sighed. Kyle turned to face him, squinting.

"I couldn't have heard you right, because I thought you just asked me if I wanted to get a drink."

"Twice, actually."

"_With_ you?"

"That's the idea, yeah," Stan said, rolling his eyes.

"... I don't get you," Kyle said. "Not at ALL. Why are you offering me a drink? Is that Denver-speak for 'Serves you right, you back-stabbing Jew whore?' Or is it some sort of last-drink news reporter tradition?"

Stan cocked an eyebrow. "No. I just... Your wife left you. A drink seems like the logical next step."

"I don't get it."

Stan sighed again. "Look, you don't have a ride. I've got a car. Let's just drive around and look for a bar."

"Yeah. Okay." They got into Stan's car; Stan started the engine and Kyle clicked his seat belt. "... I still don't get it," he ventured as they started off.

"Well... neither do I. I figured I'd be ecstatic. But." Stan shrugged, then smirked a little. "Best friends even if we hate each other, I guess."

"Heh," Kyle said, smiling a little.

"What?"

"Nothing. I just got the strangest feeling of deja vu when you said that."

--

Someone was honking at him. "I'm not IN the street, asshole!" he shouted, though he choked on the last syllable when Wendy pulled up beside him.

"... What're you doing?" he finally said.

A small smile spread across her lips. "I'm like Kyle in a lot of ways, you know."

"... _PLEASE_ don't say that," Cartman said. "It gives me actual, physical pain."

"I _mean,_" she said, "I don't like admitting when I'm wrong, either. But, well. I know when something's _right_."

Cartman blinked at her. "What are you babbling about, ho?"

"Oh, get your fatass in the car, Eric," she said, grinning.

"Really?"

"_Really_." She leaned across the passenger seat to unlock the door, and Cartman scurried around the hood to climb in. She leaned over again once he was, and kissed him.

Cartman beamed. Jew rat, zero. Him, EVERYTHING.

"Would it be completely tacky if we filled up the gas tank at Kenny's garage?"

"That would be extremely tacky and no decent person would do it. I love it. And you."

Wendy grinned. "To Switzerland, then?" she asked, putting the car in gear.

"To Switzerland," Cartman agreed, smirking.

--

THE END


End file.
